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RECENT PRESS FOR LATE APRIL

We've seen some press recently regarding some of the various upcoming records on Volar, and we thought we'd collect 'em all here for ya.

For one, if you haven't seen it yet, Soft Riot debuted their video for "Cinema Eyes", from their upcoming Fiction Prediction LP on Volar/Other Voices, last week. Thanks to Burning Flame and Impose (read below) for posting it, and read more about the LP here.

Draw the red velvet curtains for your own personal screening of Soft Riot's
"Cinema Eyes". The strobing vintage goth video for "Eyes" is captured
by MM Lyle, that fades into scenes to carry you away into the dystopian
worlds of technocratic realities. If the seizures don't take you first,
the flashes will have you pondering Jack Duckworth's night time cinema
brooding of, "those scenes you see are cut to carry you away, those
scenes you see have cracks that stop you, pause and wonder about them,
what's behind that mirror?" This is the Philip K. Dick school of future
pop reflections on film perspectives. Soft Riot's album Fiction Prediction comes out June 2013 on Other Voices Records in Europe and Volar Records in the States.

Exray’s Jon Bernson and The Fresh & Only’s Tim Cohen “got the band back together” last year to release Window Twins‘ second LP, Wish. The album was first made available by the cassette label Crash Symbols,
which has since sold out. Southern California’s Volar Records released a
limited run of colored vinyl this month, for sale in their online store.

In celebration of the vinyl production, we have a Window Twins remix to premiere! The Wish track “Others” received an industrial uplift by Uptown Sinclair — aka Isaac Edwards of Odawas.
Wish continues down the dark, echo-y chambers of
experimental, lo-fi folk Bernson and Cohen together explore in their
collaboration. Having moments of pure deconstruction, reverby tangents,
and even breaking out into somewhat jazzy percussion, the album is a
trip, for sure. It is the follow-up to Window Twins’ debut LP I’m This Tall City, which was released in 2009 on Howells Transmitter.

Tropical Popsicle’s Dawn of Delight is one of my favorite
records of the year so far. I’d like to think of all superior works of
art as a pre-conceived effort, however, that was not case with Dawn of Delight as Timothy Hines, the main creative juice behind the band, reveals in his responses below.
It seem like Hines’ process is about using whatever tools are
immediately available to him, whether it be dictaphones, iPhones, an 8
track cassette recorder or a 16 track studio with 2” tape. It was more
happenstance than forethought that brought us Dawn of Delight.
Below, Hines talks about the variety of records he listened to during
the 1 and 1/2 years it took to create the album, and how Tropical
Popsicle became a band thanks to a Thanksgiving Day party and a show and
tell meeting with Volar Records’ Craig Oliver. As Hines mentions, there
is already a new album in the works. I look forward to hearing more
about it and seeing where things go from here. (cont.......)

Speaking of Julian, the nice folks at Impose Magazine premiered his video for "All Day Long" from that upcoming 7" over here.

"When we were little kids—so long ago—we'd wonder what our friends
with no siblings were up to when we were delighted by companion-full
endless entertainment. They didn't have an other half to play with,
share with, steal from, or want to strangle, so what could these only
children be doing in their down time? With the new video from Julian
Elorduy's Fine Steps, we've finally figured out what those lonely
children were doing—tumbling in their back yards and filming it. The
playful video from the Oakland performer is such a happy matchup with
the sundrenched song that it feels like a rare instance of visual
matching audio. It's organic.

The great part about the Fine Steps video is the accompanying 7" box set that it will surely inspire you to order from Volar Records.
Strange Mutations Vol. 2 is a four-artist set of 7-inches that includes
two songs each from Fine Steps, Cosmonauts, Teenage Burritos, and Lenz.
You can get the scoop and the download on those here. Pick up the set and then roll around in the grass while listening. It's a reversion to childhood."

STREAM/ORDER/DL the debut limited clear LP Spilt Milk by
Irish punk-slop-power-pop trio Oh Boland
Formed in 2012, the trio of songwriter Niall
Murphy(Guitars, Vocals) Eanna
MacDonnchadha (bass) and Simon McDonagh (drums/vocals) came together to form Oh
Boland over the course of drunken pub crawls in their small town of Tuam,
Ireland.The band eventually recorded a
couple of EPs with Brian Kelly of So Cow, and began venturing out into Galway
City, leading to involvement with Dublin-based collective Popical Island and
their release of the Delphi split LP with fellow Ireland indie-poppers Me and My
Dog. The Delphi recordings brought them
together with producer Mark Chester, who makes his own music as Ginnels and
plays in No Monster Club. After the band realized they were sitting on a number
of songs, they decided to go back in with Chester to record this first
full-length, Spilt Milk, over the
course of two days over Halloween weekend 2014 in a cottage in one of the most
isolated parts o…

First off, a moment of reflection about the Oakland fires. I've been in my own state of shock and grief and am slowly getting back to focusing on this other stuff here. My thoughts go out to everyone involved. I had friends who were there that night and made it out safely; I had quite a few more who were close to going and decided not to. The first show I ever attended in the Bay was at a warehouse (the French Fry Factory), and the first show I ever played there was at the Ghost Town Gallery. I have more musical ties to friends in the Bay and Oakland specifically than anywhere else outside of where I live, and the creative freedom and resourcefulness of the music and arts community there is the richest that I know of in the country. There have been many thoughtful posts and articles regarding that scene in particular, the culture at large, and the nature of warehouse spaces like Ghost Ship. I was asked to do an interview for NBC San Diego and only agreed to help spread that messa…